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Participants during the Ninth Arab Medicine Transfusion Course |
It was the first time Qatar was hosting the course, which is rotated annually among Arab countries in order to focus on pressing healthcare issues in each country.
Dr Abdulatif al-Khal, director, HMC Medical Education, inaugurated the event, which was attended by representatives from 22 countries.
The course tackled global challenges in achieving blood supply self-sufficiency and ways to address those challenges, as well as featured speakers from the UK, New Zealand, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Palestine, Qatar and other countries.
“For this course, we have identified a need for massive recruitment of blood donors in Qatar. Some reasons for the low number of blood donors are the lack of information and awareness of potential donors, misconceptions about the safety of blood donation and conservative thinking,” said Dr Aysha al-Malki, administrative and technical director of HMC’s Blood Donor Centre and head of organising committee.
She said that the objectives of the course were to educate healthcare workers about blood donor recruitment and to come up with strategies and plans on how to do the campaign through the various programmes and activities during the conference.
Dr Farzal Anwar, head of Blood Donor Centre, presented an update on the recent advances in blood bank automation.
Reports on donor recruitment and blood safety were also
presented.
The discussion included Qatar’s efforts to increase the number of blood donors, including field campaigns, broadcast awareness and the use of instant short messaging to notify
donors.
